Atemlos steh ich vor Dir –
Deiner Seele Klang, atemlos in mir . . .

„ATEMLOS" - The Double Album

Two years after Sehnsucht (Desire), it’s finally here: in March 2010, Christopher von Deylen, alias Schiller, is releasing a new double album with thirty new tracks. Atemlos (Breathless) so subtly transgresses the boundaries of electronic pop that it becomes a unique musical experience.

The press hails Christopher von Deylen as a “master of global pop,” who, inspired by electronic classics such as Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Jean Michel Jarre, creates visionary sounds and condenses the atmosphere of our times into new electronic music. At home all over the world, he is always searching for the perfect sound and for ever new images to which he can give expression in his music. His sure sense for unusual sounds and voices has led to some surprising collaborations on this new double album.

Musical Journey

The American singer Nadia Ali has contributed her incomparable voice to Schiller’s Atemlos and finds her way to a new form when working with Deylen. “I had heard Nadia seven years ago. To me, her voice has a unique appeal, so I was very pleased she agreed to perform with me.” Her ‘Try’ is definitely one of my favorite numbers on the album.”

His collaboration with the French-Indonesian singer Anggun is also very unusual. “Normally, I withdraw into my studio and work on a composition until I can release it. With Anggun, it was totally different. She visited me in Berlin, and we sat down at my piano together, and the music just came out. We recorded the vocal tracks in Paris later.”

But Schiller would not be Schiller if he didn’t constantly surprise us with pure instrumentals. This time Deylen invited Krautrock legend Jaki Liebezeit (from Can, among other bands) to a session in Berlin. “I’ve worked with a lot of drummers, but Jaki has a unique style of drumming. Very reduced, very uniform, but that’s exactly what makes his percussion so emotional, almost turning rhythm into melody.”

Expedition to the Arctic

Whereas for his previous album, Sehnsucht, the musician traveled in a Volvo Amazon the 20,000 kilometers from Berlin to Calcutta, this time he found inspiration in eternal ice. On the research vessel Polarstern, he accompanied an international team of marine scientists on their expedition to the Arctic, trading his keyboard for a joystick and getting to the bottom of the sea.

This search quickly became a personal search, in which von Deylen discovered new sounds. “I’m not sure which was more impressive: traveling through ice or seeing the bottom of the sea at a depth of 2,500 meters.” The musician was not just onboard as an observer but had been trained to operate the Quest diving robot by MARUM in Bremen. “It is a wonderful, fascinating world below water through which you fly with the Quest. Having seen that, you look at the earth with different eyes.”

Electronic Sound Painting

Thus Atemlos offers stirring sound paintings of unexpected power, sustained by a delicacy that touches one deep inside. Sounds that no longer simply seek out stillness. Grand cinema. Enchanting visual worlds. Classical Schiller sounds with pop songs thrown into the bargain. As well as Kim Sanders and her mystically intoned “Under My Skin” and New Wave pioneer Midge Ure (from Ultravox, among other bands), who invited Deylen to his studio in Bath in southern England.

Following his hit albums Zeitgeist, Weltreise (Trip around the World), Leben (Life), Tag und Nacht (Day and Night), and Sehnsucht, two of which went platinum and five gold, also winning an Echo Award, the DVD Champions Award, and the Opus Award for best sound design, Atemlos is Christopher von Deylen’s sixth Schiller album. It is also being released in a Super Deluxe Edition with two CDs and a bonus DVD that includes, among other things, a twenty-minute-long “electronic symphony.”